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Pandora's Star (Commonwealth Saga, #1)

Peter F. Hamilton

Start date: February 1, 2016

Finish date: February 29, 2016

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What Members Thought

Oct 22, 2008 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 6-star-books, galactic-civilizations, signed-first-or-limited-edition, audiobook, easton-press, cyber-punk-prep-and-post, alien-cultures, science-fiction, 2000-2005, epic

6.0 stars. This one may make it onto my list of "All Time Favorites" but I am going to wait until I finish Judas Unchained as the two books should really be treated as one VERY LONG novel. This was an amazing read filled with mind blowing ideas and superb (and I really mean superb) world-building. Do not let the length of the book keep you from giving it a try. It is incredibly well-written throughout and I think the length is warranted given how much is going on. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! ...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Sandi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, audiobooks, sci-fi

90% of Pandora's Star irked the crap out of me. First, it just goes on and on and on. It's seems like a bunch of stories pieced together with no real connection. Many of the storylines never even go anywhere. Hamilton does a phenomenal job of over-describing everything. It gets mind-numbing.

Second, the sexism really annoyed the heck out of me. I'm not usually one to scream "sexism", but Hamilton can't resist talking about any female character's looks and about how some male character would like ...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Kerry rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2005, sf, ebooks, 8-out-of-10

I find myself in two minds about this book. It's good, very good in fact. The prose is easy to read, the science doesn't bog the reader down too much and Hamilton's created worlds and alien species are well done. But it is very long. I've just read 1000+ pages, something I find to be pretty hard work these days, and the story has really only just begun, with everything poised for the next 1000+ pages that is the sequel, Judas Unchained. I guess I feel a little cheated, that I did all that work a I find myself in two minds about this book. It's good, very good in fact. The prose is easy to read, the science doesn't bog the reader down too much and Hamilton's created worlds and alien species are well done. But it is very long. I've just read 1000+ pages, something I find to be pretty hard work these days, and the story has really only just begun, with everything poised for the next 1000+ pages that is the sequel, Judas Unchained. I guess I feel a little cheated, that I did all that work and it all proved to be set up for the next book.

All the same, I really liked it. After I write this I'm heading to the library website to order the sequel. I want to know what happens and how everything turns out. I like the future Hamilton has created and the civilisation and I want to see it survive and move forward again. I like the characters, even the ones I don't like, and I want to know how things turn out for them.

Hamilton has created a world that feels solid to me. I didn't study it in detail to figure out how possible or realistic it was, but at the causal reading level I was doing, it all seemed to hold together. I liked a lot of his ideas and the way he's used them. The idea of the main transport system in the entire Commonwealth being trains really appealed to me. It makes sense too. If everything is connected by wormholes, having everything set up around station yards and train tracks works nicely. I do get the feeling that air transport may make more of a comeback however, as the attack on the Commonwealth continues and more spaceships are built. The whole concept of rejuvenation and stored memories is clever, as is the way the concept of death has changed due to secure stored memories and re-life procedures. When a character who did not have those secured memories was killed at the end of the book, I suddenly found myself as shocked as the characters in the pages that he was now permanently and finally dead.

The aliens from the Dyson Sphere were suitably strange and very disturbing. I'm hoping the Commonwealth soon figures out that there will be no negotiation and get themselves organised with regard to their own protection. The other aliens are all interesting, and while I can't comment on the potential accuracy of them or the various other planets visited, nothing was so glaring it tossed me out of the story.

I did have some pacing issues, but I'm not sure if that was actually bad pacing, or if it was just that it was such a long book. We went so far back in some of the set-up that at first many things seemed to have absolutely no connection to anything else. Some are still that way, although I can see more congregations happening in the sequel. Probably the one that seemed to have the most convoluted set up was all the details of the forty year old murder, that was all there to set up Mellanie and her connection to the SI. Once it started coming together, I was okay with it, and it was rather clever that an apparently unimportant side character in the saga was actually the one we would continue following through the book.

So I guess I can see why Hamilton did it as he did, and overall he did it well, but I still have a slight sense of being cheated in that I read so much, only to be left ready to read another book rather than being finished with this one. At least I enjoyed the ride.

[Copied across from Library Thing; 17 October 2012] ...more

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Apr 05, 2011 Justin rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, read-2011, random-house, space-opera

I read Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy when I was in college and very much enjoyed it. I frankly wasn't even aware that he'd done much else until recently when I picked up Pandora's Star.

No one does space opera better than Hamilton, but he still suffers from a serious case of overwriting. I found myself constantly skipping paragraphs that went into negligible detail about one of the dozens of planets he describes.

However, this is a minor flaw, and all told I loved the book. I would very much lik ...more

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Aug 24, 2010 Christine rated it really liked it

A sweeping epic sci-fi with hostile aliens who threaten the human race; unfortunately the author gets bogged down in a bit too much minutae (he does a detailed back story of almost every character and there are alot of characters). I wish there had been some kind of listing of the characters as I kept losing track of who was who. The second volume (son't fool yourself, this is a 2000 word book divided in half) does have a listing of the major characters at the beginning. The story is engrossing, ...more

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Sep 10, 2008 Megan rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

What an incredible SF novel! It's a doorstopper, but such an intricate story that kept me turning pages. The author reveals his future world of Human society in a galactic age in a totally natural way, without it seeming like a lecture or an artificial "how we got here" story. The science was intriguing, and the characters (of which there are hundreds) compelling. There's also an intriguing at the heart of the book about an alien star system that had been enveloped in a force field. Who built th ...more

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Mar 07, 2010 Richard rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

A thousand pages and you still can't bring the sodding thing to some sort of conclusion. Going to take a whole other book is it? In the so called 'Golden Age' this could have been put to bed quite satisfactorily in about 300 pages. Shame really cos the story is quite interesting, just leaves a bad taste in my mouth thinking I'm going to have to work my way through another 1000 pages just to get to the bottom of it all. Wouldn't be so bad if the writing and world building were top notch, making i ...more

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